


1989

by girlyjuice



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Based on a Taylor Swift Song, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:20:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3883888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlyjuice/pseuds/girlyjuice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake's favorite artist is Taylor Swift, because she makes him feel things. And 1989 is basically the soundtrack to his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Welcome to New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Walking through a crowd, the village is aglow / Kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats under coats”  
> “Everybody here was someone else before / And you can want who you want / Boys and boys and girls and girls”

Anton Santiago is soaring through the air in Times Square, and it’s extremely dangerous.

“Jake!” Amy shrieks. “Put him down! Anton, tell Jake to put you down!”

Anton looks down at Jake wordlessly. The detective’s body is strong from perp chases and gym workouts, and Anton is small for a 12-year-old boy, so Jake’s shoulders can support his weight – but Amy said stop, and neither one of them has the balls to argue with Amy. “Sorry, buddy,” Jake says with a shrug, or what might’ve been a shrug if there wasn’t a little Cuban preteen on his shoulders, and sets Anton back down on the firm pavement of 7th Avenue.

“Good boys,” Amy chirps, grabbing Anton’s hand as they cross the street. Jake puffs up and beams. Amy’s never called him a good boy before.

Anton’s the baby of the Santiago family, the smallest of her brother Raúl’s five kids, and to say Amy is overprotective of him would be an understatement. She cares for him as if he were her own, putting all the same limits and rules on him that she’d put on her own child to keep him safe – which included not wanting to let him come visit New York this weekend, because New York is _dangerous_. Raúl talked her into it, insisting Anton would love to see his Tía Amy, not to mention a Broadway show or two. And, Raúl reasoned, if Amy stayed close by, Anton would definitely be safe: he’d be in the hands of the best cop in Brooklyn. Flattery works on Amy, so Anton is here for the weekend. And loving it.

“Hey, buddy, you wanna pose for a picture with Spider-Man?” Jake asks, pointing to the busker wearing a Spidey costume and very likely infringing on Marvel’s intellectual property. “You can borrow my phone if you want. Take a selfie. Put it on Instagram.” He hands over his beat-up iPhone and a five-dollar bill, and Anton skips over to the masked man.

It takes all Amy’s self-control – and Jake’s firm hand on her arm – to keep her from running over and handling this interaction. Spidey could be a pedophile, or a kidnapper, right? Stranger things have happened. She chews her lip and keeps a hand on her badge, ready to flash it at a moment’s notice if anything unsavory goes down, anything at all…

Jake clears his throat and says, “Such a great little guy,” shaking her out of her internal monologue on the best way to cuff a superhero in a hurry. “But, uh, hey, Ames, there’s something you should know.”

She turns to face him, keeping Anton and Spidey in her peripheral. It’s always impossible to tell whether Jake is being serious or is about to crack a joke or pull a prank, but his face looks sincere. “What’s that, Peralta?” she prompts.

He chews the inside of his cheek and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Earlier today, when you were haggling with the horse-and-carriage guy in the park, Anton told me a secret.” He wrinkles his nose. “I mean, at first he told me it was a secret, but then he told me I was allowed to tell you. If I wanted.”

Amy narrows her eyes. She still can’t tell where this is going. “It’s not drugs, is it?” she asks, breath hitching in her throat. Oh, she will just _kill_ Raúl if he left his weed stash out where the kids could find it. Or his porn stash, for that matter.

Jake shakes his head. “Nope. No, he actually told me he thinks he might be gay.”

_Oh._

Amy glances over at Anton, who’s holding Jake’s iPhone at arm’s length in front of Spider-Man and himself, trying out various goofy expressions.

She could’ve guessed, now that she thinks about it. Anton is the only member of the Santiago clan, male or female, to ever take an interest in musical theatre. He’s had a poster of Zac Efron in his bedroom for as long as she can remember. And right now his fingernails are painted sparkly purple because he begged and begged Jake and Amy to take him for a manicure this morning. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Amy reflects, as she looks down at her own seashell-pink nails, and then at Jake’s, which he got painted blue so Anton wouldn’t be the only guy in the nail salon.

Hit with a sudden wave of affection and somehow already knowing the answer, she asks Jake, “And how did you react to that?” Her voice comes out scratchy, and she swallows, throat dry.

Jake grins, shrugs, and shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. “I told him it’s great that he’s got himself figured out already, but that he’s allowed to change his mind any time he wants and nothing is set in stone.” He looks over at Anton, a warm smile overtaking his face. “And I told him that if anyone ever gives him trouble, he should let me know.” Then, affecting a cartoonish German accent: “Ve have vays of dealing vith bullies.” He cracks his knuckles and puts on a broad tough-guy face that makes Amy giggle.

She’s trying to decide whether it would be weird to give Jake a bone-cracking, eye-popping hug in the middle of Times Square, or if it would be better to just grab him and kiss him, when Anton runs back over to them and the moment has passed. “Look, look, Tía Amy!” he squeals, and holds the iPhone in her face. It’s a poorly-framed selfie of Anton kissing the surprisingly obliging Spider-Man on the cheek through his mask, and it immediately becomes Amy’s favorite photo of all time.

She hands Jake’s phone back to him and says, “Email me that picture, okay?” and he nods while tucking the phone into his pocket.

They each grab one of Anton’s hands and walk off toward Madame Tussaud’s.


	2. Blank Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Got a long list of ex-lovers / They’ll tell you I’m insane / But I’ve got a blank space, baby / And I’ll write your name”

Amy can’t figure out why she’s glaring at the medical examiner.

Seriously, this isn’t like her at all. She’s confronted her internalized misogyny. Her feminism involves supporting other women. Sisterhood is powerful, blah blah blah. But she still can’t stop staring daggers at the petite blonde, who’s currently palpating the torso of the corpse at their crime scene.

Jake’s stalking around the house’s creaky wood floors, looking for clues. Amy should be doing that, too, and would be, if she wasn’t so distracted by the white-hot loathing that floods through her belly every time she catches sight of the damn medical examiner.

“Is it awkward for you to work with her, now that you’ve slept together?” she hisses at Jake, and it comes out sharper than she meant it to. She bites her lip until she can taste blood.

He crouches down to peer underneath a coffee table, and it takes him a moment to register that she’s spoken to him. He’s in detective mode; petty interpersonal stuff seems out of place in that headspace, Amy knows, but she can’t help it. He tilts his head back to look up at her. “Who, the M.E.? Nah, that was weeks ago. We’re fine.” He straightens up and heads over to the fridge to look inside.

While Amy watches, the examiner runs her rubber-gloved hand over the corpse’s neck, then his lips, and Amy wonders if she did that to Jake when they were together. Her touch is gentle, but confident, practiced, certain. She’s probably a dynamo in bed. She probably knows all the tricks, all the things that men like. That Jake likes.

And she’s so pretty, too, Amy thinks, hating her. That perfect, tiny, upturned nose. That smooth, shiny, yellow hair. Those shrewd blue eyes. Jake probably dates women like this all the time. Women who look like they were plucked from the pages of _Vogue_ and _Cosmo_ but are simultaneously smart and capable and successful.

Amy can feel herself starting to panic, and she tries to remember those breathing exercises the precinct counselor recommended the last time she got claustrophobic on a case. She was trapped in a closet in a creaky old house, a house just like the one they’re in now. The counselor’s voice croaked through her walkie-talkie: “Breathe in for four counts, Detective Santiago, and then out for four counts. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Slower. All the way down into your stomach. Come on now, Santiago. You’re going to be okay.” And then Jake’s voice had interrupted, making the walkie-talkie crackle because he was talking so loud: “Amy, you’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna come get you really soon. Just hang in there. You’re brave. You can do this. Amy? Amy?”

“Amy?” the real Jake says from right beside her, and she jumps.

“What, Peralta?”

“I think you should come look at this.”

They walk over to the fridge and Jake shows her the three large bunches of broccoli in the vegetable crisper. Amy squints, heart still thudding and making it difficult to concentrate. “What, you think this is what killed him? Can someone die from a broccoli overdose?” She looks over her shoulder at the victim, wracking her brain for any medical knowledge about the effects of excessive vitamin C on the body…

Jake snorts. “No, I just thought it was weird. I mean, what kind of nutjob keeps this much broccoli in their fridge? No one really eats this many veggies, right?”

Amy furrows her brow. “Jake, just because _your_ diet is terrible doesn’t mean _everyone_ treats their body like a trash heap.” She shuts the fridge and opens the cabinet next to it, looking for anything suspicious.

A moment later, Jake muses, “Why did I go out with the medical examiner, anyway?”

Amy looks up at him. “What?”

He’s watching the M.E., who has moved on to checking between the corpse’s toes. “I mean, I guess she’s pretty, but we were… not sexually compatible. And she’s not even my type.” He pauses for another moment before shrugging it off and heading for the victim’s bedroom.

Amy searches the very back of the cabinet so no one will see her huge grin.


	3. Style

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye / And I got that red-lip classic thing that you like”

The thing about Amy is that, yeah, she’s beautiful, but she doesn’t _try_ to be beautiful. She just _is_. If you’d asked Jake, a decade ago, whether he could see himself being attracted to a woman whose personal style relies heavily on severe ponytails and gabardine pantsuits, he would’ve laughed in your face. Well, first he would’ve asked you what “gabardine” was. But then he definitely would’ve laughed in your face.

That’s the problem, though: because she’s beautiful without trying, her bar is set higher than everyone else’s. So when she _does_ try to be beautiful, it’s too much. It’s a sensory overload. It’s like if you hooked up a robot to an over-juiced power source and it caught on fire. Which is a movie Jake would totally watch, by the way.

This is what he’s thinking when Amy shows up to their undercover sting at the rockabilly convention, dressed in a cherry-red 1950s swing dress and matching high heels, with a red flower pinned into her hair and a slash of red lipstick on her mouth. “You ready to do this, Peralta?” she says coolly, and his jaw literally, actually drops.

Their perp tonight is an Elvis impersonator who sells cocaine in his spare time. (God, Jake loves being a New York detective. You get to see the weirdest shit.) In the briefing, after begging to be assigned to the case, Jake made all the Elvis puns he could think of, to the chagrin of the other detectives. And since jokes are his fallback when he’s nervous, he starts spouting them now, too.

“Jeez, Santiago! You’re turning me into a hound dog with that outfit,” he enthuses, putting on his best Elvis snarl. “I mean, you’ve got me all shook up. From my pompadour all the way down to my blue suede shoes.” He grins at her, and feels like an idiot. _Shut up, shut up, shut up._

He expects her to be annoyed, but Amy just smiles, and gives him the once-over. “You don’t look so bad, yourself,” she tells him. He’s wearing his cleanest leather jacket, and a white T-shirt tucked into a pair of jeans which he’s rolled at the ankles for that authentic greaser look. He even managed to coax his hair into a bit of a quiff, with a little gel and a lot of swearing at the mirror. He’s never spent so long getting ready in his entire life, if he’s honest. And Amy still managed to look a million times better than him. Typical.

He raises his elbow toward her and says, “Shall we?” and she settles her hand into the crook of his arm. It’s like they’re on a date, almost. Like they’re a couple of young rockabilly punks in love, and this convention is their idea of a good time, and they’re going to go in there and dance and talk and laugh, instead of spending the whole night tracking the movements of a drug dealer in an Elvis wig. “Let’s go put the king of rock ‘n’ roll in a jail cell,” he suggests, and they start toward the convention center.

“He’s gonna leave the building – in handcuffs,” Amy agrees with a smirk, and it takes every ounce of Jake’s self-control not to kiss her on her scarlet mouth.


	4. Out of the Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are we out of the woods yet? / Are we in the clear yet?"

Jake’s staring into space again. And this time, Amy catches him. Not good. Not good at all.

“Peralta,” she snaps, and he straightens up so fast that his desk chair starts to tip over. He pinwheels his arms until he regains his balance, so, okay, it’s good that he doesn’t crack his skull on the precinct floor, but he’s still made an idiot of himself in front of Amy, so it doesn’t feel like a win.

Amy watches him over the top of their computer screens, chewing her pen. “Is something wrong?” she asks, reasonably. “You seem really spacey lately.” Jake likes the way her lips look, forming these words, but that’s not the kind of thing he should be noticing, is it? He pries his gaze back up to her eyes and remembers she asked him a question he hasn’t answered.

Trying to look like a cool, haggard detective – which he is, minus the cool part – he rakes a hand through his messy curls and says, noncommittally, “I’ve just got a lot on my mind these days.” _Like how much I want to kiss you. And how stupid I am for not having the nerve to ask you out._

Amy doesn’t take the bait; apparently he’s not as intriguingly mysterious as he thought. “When I’m trying to solve a problem,” she says, tapping on her keyboard, probably filling out a case file flawlessly because she’s brilliant like that, “I like to make a list. It helps when you need to organize your thoughts.”

Jake would rather not organize his thoughts right now. Mostly because they’d all end up sorted in the same file: “Reasons Why Amy Santiago is Perfect.”

But then, maybe there are reasons why she _isn’t_ perfect. Maybe he could make a list of those. Maybe that would help.

“Cool, thanks, Ames. I’ll try it,” he says, and plucks a pen and legal pad from the overstocked stores on her desk. She gives him a look but doesn’t protest, so he tears a sheet from the notebook and sets to work.

* * *

 

Reasons Why I **Don’t** Like A.S.

 

  1. She smells too good and it’s distracting. No one should be allowed to smell that good in a work environment. It’s unprofessional.

  2. She always fixes my spelling on my case reports, and it’s annoying, even though it means I don’t have to redo them when Holt finds mistakes.

  3. She’s never late for work and it makes me feel bad about myself.

  4. She hardly ever eats candy and it makes me feel bad about myself.

  5. Her hair’s too beautiful and shiny and… fuuuuuuck.




* * *

  
“Making a list didn’t help,” Jake says after he’s shredded the offending page and flushed the scraps down the toilet.

Amy shrugs and keeps tapping away at her case report without looking at him. “Oh well. You gave it a shot. I hope you figure it out soon, Jake.”

He notices he’s looking at her lips again, but doesn’t beat himself up about it. A person can only exercise so much self-control before they run out. “Yeah, I hope so too,” he says, and sighs.

 


End file.
